Food & Drink

​National Eggnog Day (or, as some people like to call it, Christmas Eve) is right around the corner, and we’re smack in the middle of December, AKA National Eggnog Month. How did a drink made with eggs get to be the most ubiquitous holiday cocktail around? If you ask Richie Moe, bar manager…

Rice Paper, the Vietnamese restaurant on Seventh Street that opened this summer, is unquestionably stylish, but does its cuisine make the cut? Here’s a snippet from my review: “And if you’re in this midtown neighborhood and willing to sacrifice the more authentic and wallet-friendly dishes found in fluorescent-lit, no-frills Phoenix…

Latke trouble – or tsuris if you like to bemoan fate in Yiddish – is fairly standard. If you grate potatoes, form patties and fry you’re likely to get crisp potatoes on the outside and underdone potatoes on the inside.

2011, as you might recall, started off with a horrific bang. A man with a gun took aim at U.S. Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords at a Safeway just outside of Tucson, and — well, you know the rest. My colleague Paul Rubin and I did a story a few days later about…

It would appear the winds of change are not blowing favorably for Local Breeze, the laid-back eatery in a converted home off of 4th Avenue and Fillmore and just blocks from downtown Phoenix. For the past several days, the entry gate to the restaurant with a subtle tropical vibe and…

It just doesn’t taste like Christmas to me without a few of my Aunt Bonnie’s Sour Cream Cookies. I mentioned them last year in the Chow Bella “Jennifer Woods, What Are You Baking?” post. These cookies are really all about the frosting but the soft cookie makes that whole eating…

Rice Paper is unquestionably stylish: a renovated small home with exposed brick walls amid a gray and white color palette, miniature chandeliers, and lacquered-wood tables and chairs that fill the main room and enclosed porch and spill onto a patio where the sounds of Seventh Street traffic mix with lively…

Looks like something cool is about to happen on Mill Avenue in Tempe. Former San Franciscans and ex-corporate types Tina Chau and Sam Chang moved to the Valley a little over two months ago when, after a cross-country location-hunting excursion, they selected Tempe to be the home of their first…

This week for Chef Chat we met up with the guys from Texas BBQ House and talked about everything that is Texas BBQ, dry rubbed, slow cooked, sauce on the side. Today we’ve got their recipe for a Texas Po’ Boy. If you head out to the restaurant for a…

Our latest Chow Bella showdown: a traditional holiday cookie exchange. From now through Christmas, we present Chow Bella’s 12 Days of Christmas Cookies. Today, we bring you 10: Shannon Armour’s Okay-Maybe-I-Care-About-Chocolate Crinkle Cookies. While the “Who-Cares-About-Chocolate Lemon Crunch Sugar Cookies” were baking, I came across these Black Forest Chocolate Crinkle…

​Aw, shucks. Here at New Times and Village Voice Media, we’re more accustomed to telling you all about the best places to eat, drink and otherwise enjoy life in Phoenix (traditionally in our annual Best of Phoenix issues, which hits the stands each September) than bragging on ourselves, but hey — this…

Welcome to Chow Bella’s Bites & Dishes, where Valley chefs and restaurateurs respond to a question New Times food critic Laura Hahnefeld has on her mind. Have a question you’d like to ask? E-mail laura.hahnefeld@newtimes.com. Miss a question? Go here. Sure we have our favorites, but when it comes to…

Thanks to Hallmark it’s become socially acceptable to throw some green and red on just about anything and market it a special holiday treat…and don’t you just love it?! Don’t know about you, but we can’t get enough peppermint and sugar flavored goodness in the quickly dwindling Days Before Christmas…